Heart of Iron Read online

  To leave—to get as far away from here as she could. To change clothes and—

  “A bath,” she heard herself saying, feeling the dried blood beneath her nails. “A warm bath.”

  “Of course, Your Grace.”

  With a bow, Mellifare left through the far door.

  The moment she was gone, Ana peeked over to the balcony again, but the Messier was still below, watching her with its vacant gaze.

  So she’d have to find some other way to escape.

  There was another way, wasn’t there?

  The strangeness of the day was wearing thin, unveiling an itchy panic in her chest. From her balcony, she could see the stars and the other moons and Eros—but it didn’t quell the uneasiness broiling inside. If she couldn’t escape, she’d be trapped here—forever. In rich silks and beautiful petticoats and marble hallways—

  She’d rather be in a Cercian mine. At least that looked like a prison. This wasn’t the Dossier, and she missed the ship so much.

  But all these years, Siege had lied to her. What if the rest of the crew had, too? And Di?

  He wouldn’t lie to me, she reminded herself, but she hadn’t thought Siege would lie to her, either. Jax couldn’t, but she didn’t remember ever talking about family with Jax. It wasn’t something that mattered.

  Family was the Dossier.

  And family had lied.

  “Your Grace?” her handmaiden called, and she followed Mellifare’s voice into the far room, to a bath made of marble and ornate golden carvings, a tub that was more like a pool, bubbling and hissing, pouring the aroma of moonlilies into the air.

  When Mellifare left, Ana undressed herself, peeling off her clothes, hearing the crackle of Wick’s dried blood, her eyes burning with tears. He was dead. The fact sank in, like an anchor into the sea. He was dead, and Barger was dead, and Di was dead—

  Stop thinking, she told herself, dipping her foot into the bath. It was so hot it tore the thoughts right out of her.

  Slowly, she sank beneath the water and stayed under for a long time letting the hot water sting her cuts and wet her curly hair. She stayed under for so long, her pulse leaped into her throat, but the sound calmed her. It was the same one she’d heard since the Tsarina.

  A broken heart beating on.

  She didn’t know who she was anymore. She wasn’t that orphan girl from the stars. She wasn’t the girl who Siege raised, who shot beer bottles out of the air and knew every word to Wick’s drunken lullabies. That girl was part of a lie that no longer existed, a ship that sailed across her memories like a phantom, leaving a cold room in its wake.

  But she was not an Armorov either.

  Her lungs shuddered, so she pushed out of the water, sucking in a breath. The air tasted sweet—like moonlilies. She washed the blood from under her nails, and the stains from her skin, scrubbing until she was raw, and finally stepped out of the bath, pulling her hair over her shoulder. Her scalp still ached from when that Royal Captain had grabbed her.

  She still remembered the patient way Di took hold of her hair, cool fingers twining each lock, as if he was built of all the things she lacked.

  Di would never braid her hair again.

  Her fingers fell away from her damp hair. It hadn’t hit her until that very moment. All the things they would never do again. All the moments she would miss. All the ones he would never again be part of.

  She stared into the steamed bathroom mirror, at the blurry image of a girl with warm bronze skin and golden-brown eyes and black hair that fell in tangled curls across her bare, muscular shoulders. She didn’t have the body of someone dainty—fit for royal balls and beautiful dresses. She was hard, and strong, her hands covered in calluses and her fingernails bitten to the quick. She had always wondered where she came from, but now she picked herself apart, trying to find which parts were Valerio, and which were Armorov.

  But all she could see was herself—and she didn’t feel like Ana anymore.

  She searched through the drawers in the bathroom until she found a small razor, and sharpened it on a flint, the way she had back on the Dossier when she needed to shave up the sides of her head. Then she turned back toward the mirror, wiped the steam away, and pressed the razor to her scalp.

  Di was gone, and so was the girl Ana used to be.

  Robb

  Two Valerio guardsman led him through one of the many identical hallways of the palace, following the gentle ebb of the lanterns overhead.

  Erik’s going to kill me, he thought morosely, realizing that he’d annihilated his brother’s chance at the throne. He’s going to hire an assassin and literally kill me. And wear my skin as shoes.

  Although he hadn’t been to the palace in seven years, he still remembered his way around well enough. The guards were leading him to the South Tower and not, say, somewhere to be inconspicuously offed. The corridors were tall and narrow, filled with ornate filigree and golden molding. A blue-eyed Messier stood like a statue at each corner, and as he passed them he couldn’t help but shiver, remembering the Metals from the Tsarina. The guards showed him to a nondescript room in the middle of the hallway and left without so much as a nod.

  “Good-bye to you, too,” he muttered, wrapping his fingers around the doorknob, and pushed it open.

  And instantly regretted it.

  His mother perched on one of the floral fainting couches, and standing just behind, like a shadow, was a Valerio guard. He wanted to cry in relief—it wasn’t his brother. He’d live a little longer.

  “Robbert. Come, sit down,” she welcomed him, motioning to the other couch.

  He took another hesitant step into the room when he recognized the guard. Silver hair, lanky build, red-purple eyes that glared with enough intensity to stab him right through.

  Jax.

  He was dressed in a formal crimson uniform, epaulettes gleaming gold in the low lighting, the Valerio insignia pinned to his sleeve. But even the collar of the uniform couldn’t hide the glint of a black voxcollar, its nodes sparkling with electricity, the faintest glow against his sparkly skin.

  Robb’s breath caught in his throat. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the contraption, how it hissed and hummed against Jax’s skin.

  Robb had done plenty of things in his life he regretted—after all, his mother had said he longed for trouble.

  But this was far worse than trouble.

  And it was all his fault.

  Robb tried to rein in his emotions, but it was far more difficult than ever before. “Why . . . why is the Solani here?”

  “Every outlaw needs a second chance. Now come, sit down,” she repeated.

  Cautiously, he came to stand by the vacant couch, unable to bring himself to sit, every nerve ending inside him like a live wire the closer he came to Jax. He’d thought he would never see Jax again. He’d thought his family’s guards had turned the Solani in to the Messiers, that the Solani had been left to rot in some mine on Cerces for the rest of his life.

  Robb had never expected to see him here. He could still taste Jax’s lips, and it was starting to curl, rotten. First Ana, now Jax.

  His mistakes felt haunting.

  “I must say I am impressed, Robbert,” she said. “Your father would be, too. He always liked doing the right thing. Tell me, did you think about the consequences of returning the princess?”

  “Consequences?”

  “Of returning her to the kingdom? She wasn’t raised in the palace—she knows nothing about politics or economy or how to govern a kingdom. I doubt these outlaws taught her literacy, never mind understand the complexities of the government.”

  “But she’s the lost princess, Mother, and my cousin—”

  “And now, when the kingdom has its Goddess returned, the royal line will be reborn and where will we be, Robbert?”

  Too close to marry, too far from the throne, he realized, and numbly sank down on the couch. His mouth opened and closed in shock. “You knew she had survived the Rebellion.”

&nbs
p; “I did not,” his mother said. “I thought she had died with her brothers.”

  “But you recognized her on that ship, didn’t you?”

  “I had a feeling. I had just hoped you would not do the imbecile thing you just did. You need to curry favor with the Grand Duchess and the other Ironbloods if you ever wish to return to the Academy.”

  “You’d have killed her.”

  “We all make sacrifices for our kingdom, dear,” she replied coolly.

  He’d believe that his mother had sacrified anything when the sun caved in on itself. She was calculating and coarse. That was why she herself came to retrieve him. To make sure he did exactly as she wanted. She’d even thought he would turn Ana in at the palace—but he hadn’t.

  He had surprised her.

  “Ana isn’t a sacrifice—”

  His mother’s lips pursed. “Do we damn one to save a thousand, or damn a thousand to save one? As Valerios, we do what is necessary.”

  “Ana is half Valerio! She can learn to be a good ruler. She’s resourceful, and she’s smart—”

  “She is soft,” his mother snapped, rising to stand. She towered over him, her icy eyes looking down the bridge of her nose, making him feel like the ten-year-old who was expected not to cry after losing his father. “You have disobeyed me once, and made me look like a fool—you will not again. We will fix this problem, and you will not get in the way. Do you understand?”

  “Mother, you can’t honestly want to kill her—”

  She grabbed his wrist and dug her thumb into the chip, as she had done in Astoria, as she always did to remind him of who he was. His mother never needed to brandish threats, because they were quiet and subtle, laced into her bodice, sewn into her seams.

  “You will not interfere. Do you understand, my son?” she repeated.

  He could feel Jax’s violet eyes on him, but he couldn’t meet them; he was too ashamed. All Robb wanted to do was go back to those moments on the Dossier. He wanted to do it all differently. Maybe then they wouldn’t have ended up here.

  “Yes, Mother,” he replied softly, and she let go of his wrist.

  “Good. Come, Solani, we should leave Robbert. He’s had a long day and I am sure he needs his rest,” she said, and Jax silently followed, leaving Robb alone in the room with the realization that he hadn’t changed Ana’s fate after all.

  Because of who he was, he had damned her all the same.

  Di

  He hovered his hand over the lock to the crew’s quarters and tried to remember how to reach inside again. He concentrated, letting his programming slither into the keypad, and threaded himself through the code. He twisted his hand and the lock responded, beeping green—

  And as the door opened, he dodged Riggs’s mechanical leg.

  “LET US GO, YOU PIECE OF— Captain!” Riggs cried, eyes growing wide as he looked past Di to Siege. “You’re alive!”

  Lenda dropped her makeshift weapon—a stool—as Talle leaped at Siege, swinging her arms around her, kissing her on the mouth, her nose, her cheeks.

  “Goddess, I thought you were dead!” Talle, with dark circles under her eyes and clothes rumpled, sobbed into Siege’s shoulder. “I thought you’d gone to the stars!”

  Siege pulled her wife into a hug. “I’m here, starlight. I’m fine. How is everyone?” Her green eyes wandered over the three of them. “Where’s Jax?”

  “They took him,” Riggs said as Di handed his leg back to him. “And . . . Ana is . . .” He shook his head. “Why didn’t you tell us, Captain?”

  “Tell you what?”

  Talle said, “That Ana is the lost princess, sunshine.”

  Di was not so sure his sound receivers were working properly. “The what?”

  Talle fussed with Siege’s coat buttons. “It’s not true, right? She can’t be. You’d have told us.”

  Behind her, Lenda agreed, folding her thick arms over her chest. “It’s all over the newsfeeds. She’s Ananke—”

  “Didn’t you use to work in the palace?” asked Riggs. “Why didn’t you recognize her?”

  “I never saw her. They always kept the princess locked up so we plebeians couldn’t see her—”

  As the crew bickered, Di backed out into the hallway. One step. Then another. There was a mistake. His thoughts raced so fast he could barely compute them all. Ana was not—she could not—there had to be some—

  The other crew members voiced the same thoughts. That she was not, that she could not be, because the princess was dead, because the princess had burned.

  But those scars. Those burn scars.

  How did it suddenly seem so probable when it had not been a possibility ever before?

  No, no, no—

  He grabbed Siege by the back of the coat and yanked her through the doorway and into the hallway with him. He needed to think—just two seconds alone—and suddenly there was a swift click in his head—

  And the door shut to the quarters with a loud snap.

  Locking the crew inside.

  “D09!” Siege barked, catching herself on the wall. Her hair blazed a bright, angry red. “What in the bloody—”

  “You found us stranded in an escape pod,” he interrupted. “The palace does not have escape pods.”

  The captain pursed her lips. “It was a ship’s.”

  “Like from a—a transport vessel? A merchant ship? From the aftermath of the Rebellion?” he asked desperately, searching Siege’s face for the truth.

  After a moment, Siege shook her head. “No.”

  He went numb.

  In the seven long years he had been Ana’s, he had never known. He had never even thought to question it. He was Metal. Metals did not care. The probability of her being the princess was .0034 percent. It was not enough for a rational computer to consider. And he was a computer. He did not care.

  But then why were his hands trembling?

  His functions were going strange. His code jittered.

  “You saved her,” the captain said, as if that was supposed to bolster him. “The crew found your pod floating in the dead space between Iliad and Cerces, and when we opened it up, there you both were. The little girl in your arms was badly burned, and you asked to use our infirmary. You told only me who she was, and you asked me to protect her.”

  “I asked you? I remembered? Why can I not now? What were you supposed to protect her from?”

  “You didn’t say. You struck a deal with me to protect her and wipe your memories. We didn’t realize she’d lost hers, too, until after I’d already wiped yours.”

  “My glitches,” he realized. “That was why my memory core was glitching. Because you tampered with it.”

  She nodded. “And I was to dump you at one of those waystations for a Messier to find and HIVE.”

  “But you did not.”

  “I don’t kill innocent people.”

  “But I am not a person.”

  She massaged the bridge of her nose. “Di, how many times do I have to tell you— Are you okay? Metalhead?”

  “I cannot feel my legs—” he said a moment before his knees went numb. Siege caught him and slowly eased him to the floor. “I—I am malfunctioning. I cannot think straight. You . . . agreed to take her in? But for what? What did I make a deal with you for?”

  She squatted beside him. “It doesn’t matter—I never collected. I shouldn’t have kept this from either of you, I know, but . . . I was selfish. She was happy, I thought . . .” Her brow furrowed. “She was mine. For a moment she was mine.”

  He pressed his palms against his temples. He did not know how to process the information. The whirls and whorls inside his head ground louder and louder, beating in repetition like a drum.

  I am, I am, I am, never quite completing the statement. “I—I stole her away. I never returned her,” he said, dread coiling in his middle. “What if I am the villain? What if I had set that fire—”

  “Metalhead,” Siege said gently, “you saved her. She’s alive now because of you.
”

  But who—or what else—could have caused the fire? Reports said it was a Metal—

  He pulled his hands through his hair. “The malware on the ship said it wanted her to burn.”

  “It . . . did?”

  Realizing it at the same time, Di and Siege exchanged the same look—a growing horror.

  “Oh, Goddess,” he said. “It knew her—the Tsarina knew her and it told her to burn. There is a ninety-seven-point-three-eight percent likelihood that it was a part of or knew about the Rebellion. I would have returned her if she had been safe. Oh, Goddess,” he repeated, and crawled up the wall to his feet again, legs wobbly. “We must rescue her. We must—”

  She caught him by the arm as he tried to leave for the cockpit. He whipped back, the taste of a fight on his tongue—

  “The door, metalhead” was all she said.

  Oh.

  There was a click in his head, a shift, a command, and the keypad turned green. The door slid open. The crew, having heard the entire conversation from the other side, leaned out hesitantly, afraid it’d shut again.

  Talle cleared her throat. “So, let me get this straight . . . you are . . .”

  “D09?” Lenda ventured.

  “But he’s smashed,” Riggs argued. They headed toward the cockpit after the captain. “And this is the Metal from Rasovant’s ship. How do we know he isn’t a trick?”

  Di began to explain how he could not possibly be anyone else, ready to divulge all their darkest secrets, when a whirring came up and knocked him gently on the back of the head. He glared at E0S.

  Lenda blinked. “Yeah, that’s him all right.”

  “E0S’d know.”

  “Can’t fake that kinda thing.”

  Di gave them an incredulous look. “You believe that thing?”

  Talle clapped him on the shoulder as they ducked into the cockpit. “Don’t take it personally, D09—”

  “Di—please,” he said, somewhat awkwardly. “D09 feels . . . it does not . . . I am not . . .”

  Talle grinned, and kissed Di on the forehead. “Di, then.”